Welcome to StudyStack, where users create FlashCards and share them with others. Click on the large
flashcard to flip it over. Then click the green, red, or yellow box to move the current card to that box.
Below the flashcards are blue buttons for other activities that you can try to study the same information.

Free flashcards for serious fun studying. Create your own or use sets shared by other students and teachers.

To flip the current card, click it or press the Spacebar key.
To move the current card to one of the three colored boxes, click on the box. You may also
press the UP ARROW key to move the card to the Correct box, the DOWN ARROW key to
move the card to the Incorrect box, or the RIGHT ARROW key to move the card to the Remaining box.
You may also click on the card displayed in any of the three boxes to bring that card back to the
center.

WGU-Ethics

Ethics

How philosophers think persons would naturally behave if there were no government threatening to punish them

Thomas Hobbes and the modern social contract theory

people are naturally competitive and need government to contain their natural strive for security (preventing murders and such)

Basic argument (Hobbes) for an ethics based on a social contract

Hobbes crucial first argument is that before society existed, there was “the state of nature”. held that this lawless state was a time of everyone for themselves.

Utilitarianism

ethical theory proposed by Jeremy Bentham and James Mill - all action should be directed to achieving the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.

Weaknesses of Utilitarianism

1. Utilitarianism runs into problems when sentiment is involved.
2. Doesn't provide enough support for individual's rights.
3. That happiness (etc) cannot be quantified or measured.
4. That we cannot calculate all the effects for all the individual

Strengths of Utilitarianism

1.The poor under-educated lower classes should count equally with the rich, educated upper class.
2.Bentham utilitarian theory came directly out of his social concerns.

Deontological

Duty based. Focuses on your duties, whether they be to other people, to animals or to God.

Kant believed it is the only thing that is totally and completely good without exception

Categorical Imperative

A moral obligation that is imposed on us no matter the circumstances or our personal desires

Autonomy

Being in control of your own life

Kant's two formulas of the catergorical imperative

1. Universally willing the maxim of your actions or taking the standpoint of everyone else
2. Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or that of another, always as an end and never as a means only.

Retributivism

A theory of punishment that is best summed up by the phrase an eye for an eye.

Identify the major points critical of Kant's ethics

1. Consequentialism
2. Jeremy Bentham's Utilitarianism theory (attempt to create as much happiness in the world as possible)

Consequentialism

Ethical theory that determines good or bad, right or wrong, based on the outcomes.

What are the difference between retributiviam (Kant) and Utilitarian (Betham)

Kant believed an eye for an eye. Betham believes punishment is mischief and is a greater evil but is justifiable.

Moral Objectivism

Belief that morality is universal, eternal and unchanging

Cultural relativism

Belief that morality is relative to each individual culture, we can’t make universal moral claims like “murder is always wrong”

1. Different societies have different moral codes
2. Moral code determines what is right within that society.
3. No objective standard can be used to judge one's societal code as better than another.
4. Moral code of our own society has no special

Ethical Subjectivism

Moral judgments are nothing more than expressions of personal opinion

Psychological egoism

1. Theory of human nature, not an ethical theory.
2. Human nature to act out of self-interest.

Ethical egoism

How we should behave

Hero stories

Earliest known writings about heroes who exemplified virtues most admired

Value concepts can be discerned from commercial documents, law codes, wisdom sayings, hero stories and myths.

Royal Archives

Earliest know writings provide the boasts of monarchs who conquered and often devastated neighboring territories.

Gigamesh, Kink of Uruk

One of the earliest monarchs was said to be the product of the union of a high priest and the goddess Ninsun.

Work ethic

One fulfils ones destiny through service and through fidelity to whatsoever becomes ones responsibility.

The law code of Semitic King Lipit Ishtar

One of several early royal prescriptions recovered by archeologists. Each ruler declared that he was divinely chosen for office, thereby linking earthly rule to divine wishes.

The book of the Dead

Earliest known writings contains a negative confession in which the deceased recited before a panel of 42 divine judges a list of 42 sins no committed.

Hebrew scriptures

One of the earliest known writings – Bible

School documents

One of the earliest known writings

Aristotle's theory

Involves a virtuous way of life by its relation to happiness

Key element of Aristotle(2)

1. highest happiness is to be found not in the ethical virtues of the active life, but in the contemplative or philosophic life of speculation, in which the dianoetic virtues of understanding, science and wisdom are exercise.

Virtue

Moral excellence, or having the courage to do what is right.

Ethical egoism

Each person ought to do whatever will best promote his or her own self-interest

Utilitarianism

We ought to do whatever will promote the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.

Kant's theory

Our duty is to follow rules that we would consistently will to be universal laws, rules that we are willing to have followed by all people in all situations.

Social contract theory

The right thing to do is to follow the rules that rational self-interested people can agree to establish for their mutual benefit.

Replaced divine law

Moral law

Aristotle said that virtue is a

Trait of character manifested in habitual action

Three advantages of virtue as an ethical standard

1. What kind of person should I be?
2. Helps us explain how a wide variety of actions can be ethical.
3. Allows for the whole spectrum of human experience to influence ethical deliberation.

Disadvantages of virtue as an ethical standard

1. More disagreement about which traits are virtues than there is about which actions are right.
2. Emphasizes character traits instead of actions.
3. Does not provide us with specific rules to guide our actions.

The Divine theory

Things are morally good or bad or morally obligatory, permissible or prohibited, solely because of God’s will and commands.

Euthyphro dilemma

If moral good acts are willed by God because they are morally good, then they must be morally good prior to and so independently of God’s will.

3 Elements that constitute the theory of natural law

1. The world is a natural order with values and purposes built into its very nature
2. How things ought to be
3. Laws of reason which we are able to grasp because God has made us rational beings.

3 concrete observations about the Brahmanical (Hindu) society

1. The vedas (canonical collection of texts) is its ultimate authority.
2. Social ordering dividing into 4 classes.
3. An act is moral if it safeguards the good of all-not moral if it creates disorder.